An Overview of the Corporate Environmental Disclosure Practices in India: Magnifying the Role of the Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosure Framework

The corporate world has witnessed several environmental disclosure frameworks considering the ongoing climate change and global warming issues, especially in India due to its downgrading environmental conditions. The study’s purpose is to provide an overview of different corporate environmental disclosure frameworks in practice. Among all, the TCFD is one of the latest environmental disclosure frameworks which has received global credibility due to its specific relevance for corporate climate risks and opportunities. Considering its recent demands, the study further investigates the climate-related financial disclosure status of the top-listed firms in India based on the TCFD framework. To fulfil the aforementioned objectives, a sample consisting of the top 77 firms from India (excluding the financial firms from the S&P BSE100 companies) from FY 2018–2019 to FY 2021–2022 is considered. The T-test and Mann-Whitney U test results reveal that the trend of adopting the TCFD framework has moderately increased in India. Among all, the metrics and targets disclosure level has shown the sharpest rise. Further, the study examines whether the TCFD framework’s adoption status differs among Indian firms based on firms’ CEO duality status, firm size, polluting industrial profile, and post-COVID settings, which are indicators of governance, firm, industrial, and economic-related attributes, respectively.